How do you tell your heart what to love, who to love, and the degree of love you have? As a society, I think we have understood rules governing love. Much of my life has been about exploring and challenging these sometimes unspoken standards because I have often thought there is a strong need for those that think "outside the box." And yet one of the reasons why the emotion of love can be so painful is because there are no concrete rules that are proven to be right or wrong.
When I met my husband, we quickly became great friends. But when we started to fall in love, it was all wrong...or so it seemed. My heart screamed out how much I love this guy! But everything was against us. Probably the biggest rule that I was ignoring was the fact that Jon was what we consider a "rebound" relationship. I was coming out of my first marriage, and the last thing I was looking for was to jump right into something else. I was actually looking forward to being on my own again. I mean, how do you justify failing at what you thought was going to be an eternity with one person and then thinking you can start over with someone else immediately without taking the time or measures necessary to do all that self analyzation to prevent it from happening again. That's pretty much what we tell ourselves needs to happen, right? I kept trying to tell Jon that it wasn't right and that he needed to drop me and move on to someone else that didn't feel so crazy mixed up. My problem was that although my brain was trying to tell me to do things this way, my heart was telling me "hell no! you have never felt anything this powerful before, and you don't want to give that up based on some silly script you think your life should be following." And thank god I followed the latter because although my life isn't some sort of fairy tale, I did get to marry a man that my heart has fallen completely in love with, and it makes all the hard times that are inevitable in a marriage so much more worth it!
More recently however, I have been pondering the rules that seem to be placed on us for where we should draw the line in our love for our beloved pets. I know that when you compare your children and your pets, there are some vast differences. In my opinion, I think the main one would be that we all hope to NEVER have to know the feeling of burying your own child, but unless you find yourself in the twilight of your life with a new pet, then we all know it is unavoidable we will be faced with the pain of losing our pet. But other than that, what really is the difference? Before I went through my recent ordeal with Dolly (God, she was so young and my heart still hurts so much), I had always thought it seemed kind of crazy to spend thousands of dollars on medical for your pets. Your pets should have a price right? WRONG! Not when it comes to matters of your heart. I quickly realized that I would go to any lengths financially or otherwise if it meant that I could save the life of my dear dog. I have never loved her any more or less than either of my two children, and although she doesn't have the same communication abilities as my kids, I know the feeling was returned. It seemed somewhat of a less complicated decision with Rex and Amber because they were older and didn't have too much of their life left anyway. But we find ourselves in that same position with our human loved ones at times also. How many people have been faced with the decision of whether or not to pull the plug? We make those choices based on the well-being of the patient and not by how much money we have or are willing to spend. If it came to saving the life of my child, I would beg, borrow, or (god forbid) steal the money. And in this instance I found out that I felt the same way about Dolly. When we made the decision to "pull the plug" on her it was not because we weren't willing to fight with her anymore. It was because that is what was best for her based on the disease she had and the options available to us. And why did we do that? Because we came to love her and care for her as a part of this family the same way we do for our kids. And in return she gave us her undying love and affection and loyalty in a way that I sometimes feel was more than I deserved.
So I say follow your heart. Don't completely disregard your brain, but if it weren't for my heart, I wouldn't have been standing next to the man I love with all my heart and next to one of our dogs I love with all my heart knowing that I was doing the right thing and knowing that he supports me 100%. And then we came home to our two beautiful children, and although I know that it has been a long road, love has brought me a lot to be happy about.
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